Euromoney’s eye is drawn to news of a digital artwork that only exists as a high-resolution file, and which showcases the parallel between traditional money and cryptocurrencies.
The Crypto Train, now in an online auction, fills an obvious gap. Forget non-fungible tokens representing basketball players or corporate titans: let’s see more art representing cash.
“Even before The Crypto Train went to auction, we received significant offers from serious crypto enthusiasts and Silicon Valley investors who are the ones who currently seem to most understand this exploding virtual investment trend,” says Stephen Howes, director of Thomas Crown Art, a leading independent international art agency handling the sale.
He describes NFTs as “an investment megatrend of the decade” and suggests that NFT sceptics “would have been those people who knocked the potential of the internet in the ‘90s and who would have said Amazon as an online retailer ‘won’t catch on’ in the 2000s”.
So true.
The creator of The Crypto Train, British artist Adrian Chesterman, explains his visual metaphor to bridge the distance between traditional monetary mechanisms and the new virtual world of Bitcoin and Ethereum: “I considered a locomotive to be the perfect vehicle to represent such a metaphysical journey, being as it is a land-based, fast-moving machine that relentlessly pushes in one direction… forwards.